Artist statement - Finnegans Wake Chinese Version
The idea is come from Finnegans Wake. I think that is a very interesting and great
book. For me, it is a book that hard to understand. It is because the writer writes the
book by using many different languages. So, it is hard for reader to read. But, user
can try to guess the meaning of this book. Reader can feel great that if they find the
meaning of the book. Also, the meaning of the book is a big story. The story is about
a man and a woman in Sin River of the history. Except the concept, guessing meaning
is the most interesting part for me. However, it is sad that there no Chinese version.
So, I would like to create the Chinese version of this book.
So, I use Google translate for translation. I just choose a part of Finnegans Wake and
let Google translate to translate. In fact, there are some few words do not translate
yet. It is because it is not a word in any language. So, I break down these words. At
last, there are most of the words will be Chinese but there are some grammar
mistakes. Then, it will be correct by human. Also, I want to make the Chinese version
also have the part of guessing meaning. The explanations of Wikipedia were used.
However, I feel that it is not enough for the part of guessing meaning. I try to use
mind map to build up. It means that I draw the word for the new Chinese version at
last. What did I do is simulate the part of guessing meaning.
After that, I try to start a new part of the work. What is the pronunciation of this
Chinese version? It is the second part of this work.
In this part, it is a sound work. There are 13 sounds. It is record that people read out
the original and translated version of Finnegans Wake in Cantonese, Putonghua and
English. For each sound, I will find different source of the sound which is related the
key words. I mix them together for the 13 different sounds piece in to a CD. In this
part, I try to simulate the part of different languages. It is because Finnegans Wake is
used different language such as English, French and German. I try to use our
common language in this sound work.
For this work, I just simulate Finnegans Wake which is guessing meaning and
different languages.